“I always pray to Jesus to help me see the needs of others so that I can bring them love and cure them following the example of Jesus,” Canossian Sister Goretti Wong Siu-kau, a long time hospital pastoral worker said, as she marked the golden jubilee of her entry into the consecrated life this year.
In a feature in the Kung Kao Po, she shared that the founder of the Canossian Institute, St. Magdalene of Canossa, set a good example for her in showing how important it is to give glory to God when she did anything.
Sister Wong was born to a non-Catholic family in Hunan province. She has a younger brother. However, after her father passed away when she was five-years-old, her younger brother was cared for by her aunt. Her mother brought her to Guangzhou and they moved to Hong Kong one year later.
Sister Wong recalled that she transferred to St. Francis of Assisi’s English Primary School when she was in primary four. When she attended the school’s opening Mass, she was attracted by the beautiful design of the chapel.
As the students were very noisy at that time, Father Orazio de Angelis told them to be quiet inside “the palace of Jesus Christ.” She became interested in knowing more about Jesus who owned such a beautiful “palace” and deserved such respect.
She received baptism when she was 16-years-old even though her mother did not like the idea, warning her not to become a nun. However, as she became more and more dedicated to her faith, she felt that she should give up everything to follow Christ.
After she graduated from high school, she told her mother she wanted to join a convent and was strongly opposed by her mother. She then joined the nursing school of Guang Wah Hospital. Four years later, she told her mother she was determined to join a convent despite her opposition. She recalled that her mother was absent at her initiation ceremony as well as the profession of her first vow.
Her prayers for the conversion of her mother were answered when, two years before she made her permanent vow, her mother joined a catechism class and was baptised in 1979.
She recalled her joy as her mother attended her permanent vow ceremony in 1979 and said her mother’s love for her and her willingness to offer her daughter to Jesus made her more determined to be a good Canossian sister.
With her professional knowledge in nursing, she was assigned to do frontline work at Canossa Hospital after she made her first vow.
She remembered that the patients at that time were mostly tourists or sailors who were better-off and were served by the foreign doctors. She said she had her struggles about this first assignment as she had hoped to serve the poor like the founder of the Canossians. A sister then reminded her that poverty can be spiritual, which made her realise the significance of talking to patients after treatments to hear their stories.
She spent a lot of time speaking to the patients in the orthopaedic ward as she cared for their physical as well as spiritual needs. She met patients suffering from homesickness leaving their families to come to Hong Kong to work; an elderly foreign woman injured in an accident on a cruise who was cared for by her husband who had difficulty in walking; a girl suffering from anorexia who, finally, was willing to share her problems with her encouragement.
Sister Wong was also responsible for the administrative as well as the formation work of the religious institute. From 1997 to 2003, she was the provincial superior of Hong Kong and Macau.
After she retired, she went to the Canossian motherhouse in Verona, Italy, to help with the formation work there.
After she returned to Hong Kong in 2005, she regularly visited the elderly and the terminally-ill patients at Caritas Hospital.
At present, she works at the procurement department of Canossa Hospital to help with the purchase of equipment and supplies, a job she has been doing since the department was set up in 2007.
In 2008, she was diagnosed with neck bone degeneration and needs to wear a support brace. But she said the physical pain has not undermined her determination to serve the Canossian community or the Church.
The 73-year-old Sister Wong is now the superior of the Canossian Formation Community and helps young women, who go to experience life in the convent, to discern their vocation.
